Sep 5, 2014 | By Alec
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is using 3D printing technology to recreate the crime scene of a murder case that has gone unsolved for the past eighteen years. On the 9th of August, 1996, the 21-year-old senior student Kobayashi Junko, who was at that time studying at Sophia University, was killed in suspicious circumstances in his home in Katsushika-Ku, Tokyo.
Attempts to solve this case has always been acerbated by the fact that his student home was completely destroyed by a fire after the murder. However, police were able to conclude that Kobayashi was stabbed to death while his hands and feet were bound and his body was wrapped in a blanket. Some blood traces that did not belong to the victim were also found, which may lead to the perpetrator (the traces point to an unidentified male), but sadly too many details were sadly lost in the fire that followed.
On the 4th of September, the Japanese news website Sankei Digital reported that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police is now working together with a 3D printing technicians to recreate the crime scene based on photographs from 1996 and blueprints from the building. A model of the small two story structure has been printed in a 1:28 scale, made from plaster.
The Tokyo Police Department hope that this scale model will allow their officers to once again interpret the murder, the crime scene and various other factors that surround this mysterious case from 1996. Furthermore, they hope the model will also aid the memories of the locals and police involved at the time.
This is not the first time that the Japanese police department uses 3D printing in an attempt to solve murder cases. Last year, they created a 3D model of another murder crime scene in Tokyo hoping to solve a 13-year-old cold case murder mystery. In August 2013, they revealed that during the investigation of Aum Shinkrikyo, which is most famous for the sarin attack in the Tokyo's subway system on March 20, 1995, they created a 3D face model of Makoto Hirata, a member of Aum Shinrikyo with help of 3D printing. The 3D model was then published through ANN. In the future, the Metropolitan Police is hoping to use 3D printed models as materials for jury trial.
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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